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Re: Could I still buy?

If you can find someone near by to purchase frames with brood and buy a queen, you should be able to make a nuc and only make your nuc 5 frames. Keep an eye on them and you may have to put them in a hive.

Re: Could I still buy?

Re: Could I still buy?

Remove three frames out of a working hive with brood, honey and pollen, and of course nurse bees. Put them in a nuc box (2 frames would be empty) and add a queen. Would that work out? Or is it too small?

Re: Could I still buy?

That's a nuc. If you can add a frame of honey it would be a fed nuc. It doesn't even take that much brood either. Just two frames of brood with bees, and a shake of bees with a queen and a feeder of syrup will start off a new nuc. The intensity and length of your flow mixed with how you time giving them more space and feed will determine whether it will be a nuc all year or a hive. I start nucs with a frame of dark brood and a frame of honey with a cell and two shakes of bees. Keep feed available if they want it. I move them to ten frame boxes at 35 days usually. By 70 days they are drawing a second deep.

Re: Could I still buy?

You can start a nuc with one frame of bees. Observation hives are typically one, sometimes two frame hives, and they do just fine.. Plenty of bees. Each year when the school programs are over, I take the one frame observation hives, take the one frame from them, put in a five frame nuc, put one starter wax, fill the nuc with wood or styrofoam. Feed and as they grow, remove wood/stryofoam and add drawn comb or foundation. One word of caution, don't give them too much drawn brood comb, too fast, as they have to defend it against small hive beetles and wax worms. This normally occurs the first week in June. When the 5 framer is about full, move to a 10 framer. By September, they will have filled the 10 framer and they go through the winter in Kentucky just fine.